


be one (flesh)

by ilovehawkeye



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: AU, Blood, F/F, Hitchhiking, Psychological issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-11
Updated: 2014-07-11
Packaged: 2018-02-08 10:37:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1937727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilovehawkeye/pseuds/ilovehawkeye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here also people get lost, Rachel thinks; here there be tygers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	be one (flesh)

Rachel sees a hand first; all the rest is just a silhouette covered with thick shade of tall pines and October night. The hand is long and steady with its thumb up; the sleeve of the jacket she wears is rolled up, black and worn in the cold blue of low beam.

That’s really how she knows who it is even before the figure moves toward the car; that and the big black bag on her right shoulder, which for a moment swings into the light.

The bag and, well, the gut feeling which is actually centered in the throbbing, bleeding point of her head, right where Sarah hit her with something she’s sure is still in that bag. The concussion mixes with insomnia and déjà vu; makes her feel like she’s on a rollercoaster, trying not to vomit on a peculiar steep turn. She can hear pounding of the little wheels on the rails, its squawking which turns into the peeping and ringing as Sarah opens the door.

The first thing Rachel thinks – damn, she looks pretty good. She expects something else – the last time they are that close (that’s even more shameful episode than her amateur mistake back at the cabin) she has dark blue and grey circles under her red eyes and pink and violet spider veins under the yellow skin of her cheeks and neck; and now she looks very fresh – too fresh. Her hair isn’t tangled and face isn’t as swollen.

She watches Rachel suspiciously, one hand holding the door and another’s keeping the bag invisible behind her back; Rachel thinks about an axe, like a red fire axe, because there must be a red fire axe, but “Cold night, eh?” – is all she manages to say. Sarah doesn’t answer, just turns her head both sides, watching disk under the empty road; but then asks her if Rachel’s going to North Bend. Sure, Rachel says, losing all the breath she kept for promptly starting the car and reaching for a glove box. Sure she’s going to North Bend. Even though she’s more into Twilight Zone.

There aren’t any long red fire axes in her bag which she’s already placed on the backseat; Rachel thinks about a small all black axe, like ones they take for camping – small and sharp enough to keep it in the bag like that. She needs it to mutilate bodies like she does, Rachel guesses again – for a what exactly time over the last couple of weeks? She watches Sarah comforting herself in a lowered seat, asking absent-mindedly how tall the previous passenger was to need a seat lowered like that.

Tall enough for you to struck the neck instead of the back of the head because you wouldn’t reach it, Rachel thinks; and weak enough to lose consciousness from blood loss very soon, thus depriving you of being monitored while you’re taking care of another one. Sarah’s sure not to like those who are much different from her, so those poor creatures usually look even less human than their truer to type friends.

When she finally gives up on getting comfortable and Rachel’s finished with slowly getting over a peculiar wide hole in the ground, Sarah shoots another question – three, actually: has she seen another hitchhiker on the way? and maybe a camper? and anybody at all?

No; nope; don’t think so. These roads are kinda closed, after all, huh? Yeah, these places are definitely not as popular as they had been – probably because of the interchange they’ve built a while ago down the creek.

The creek. Sarah’s sure to know why people don’t enjoy it nowadays as they used to before; but she doesn’t like talking about that; she stares at Rachel once again instead with those eyes of an investigator which Rachel doesn’t like – she’s more used to using this stare, not being the one who is stared at.

And then – what, really? – she asks Rachel what she is doing here, on the abandoned road in the crimson conception of the cold and windy October night; and this is actually such an unexpected and bold move that Rachel hardly fights an urge to stare back at Sarah and fuck up all the disguise. The badge is itching her in her pocket, and she can hear the buzzing of a gun in the glove box, ready to finally shoot someone it’s been ready to shoot for a while now.

But she manages to smile wryly while remembering her legend – she’s a mother, moving to one spot near Canadian frontier where her daughter is living with her biological (she empathizes) father; and here there are no cops! – and that sounds pretty too excited to be unsuspicious, so Rachel laughs lightly, like – well, you know, those guys in broad funny hats who wear khaki, fine you for not using a seatbelt and sometimes speak to their deaf half-wolves (or, wait, it was a Canadian one). But Sarah just hums to herself and smirks absently, sympathizing to Rachel with her estranged family; Rachel tries to shrug like she cares as much as she possibly can.

What is more interesting – does Sarah keeps her screwdriver or a penknife in that bag, too? Rachel tries to glance back while Sarah’s watching the trees and dusk through the window; it doesn’t give you anything new. She feels Sarah’s staring at her once again, now with some nervous awaiting, and Rachel decides it’s her time now to ask questions.

Sarah suddenly turns sad and tired after a question; her nervousness loses its acuteness and she looks now somehow relaxed and worried – something Rachel slightly remembers from a group therapy when people finally get enough inner strength and trust in their listeners to share what’s been gnawing at them. Rachel’s taken aback by that and feels some semi-surreal doubts stinging her from inside, but if she knows something on the case that kept her sleepless and hungry for such a long time, it’s that Sarah Manning is a perfect bloody manipulator who easily – too easily – makes connections even with those who has it coming. In the end, nowadays there are no reckless hitchhikers left, they are either got smart or died out, and yet she’s got several experienced campers and hikers cracked open with no sweat.

So she just keeps half-smiling with concern, encouraging Sarah to unbosom, and it seems to work as Sarah sighs deeply and rubs her chin with a thumb.

There is a woman, Rachel hears, trying not to drive a wheel into another crack on the road, who is very close to Sarah, but she left with her husband for camping something like five days ago and since then there has been no shown signs from her; not a message or a phone call or something, and she’s not back at the theatre though she had only two days off this week and it’s not in her upright and neurotic character to shirk her stupid hobby. Rachel hums sympathetically and bites her lip, like – okay, go on. Sarah shrugs and laughs – it would be funny to explain to that dumbass of a husband who the fuck she is and what she’s doing at their favorite camping spot; but there was no one anyway – no one for a goddamn dozens and dozens of miles of forest she’s crossed, and all the rest zones and cabins and shops are closed – because it’s fucking autumn, a fucking middle of the week and – surprise-surprise – such an “exclusive” shithole that nobody even knows about it anymore.

And here also people get lost, Rachel thinks; here there be tygers. But she only smiles broader and turns on the windscreen; one may assume this woman is very important.

In Sarah’s eyes appears something like pain mixed with pleasure; she moves her thumb from chin to lips absent-mindedly and shrugs again – an uncertain, despondent gesture, as if this train of thoughts has never yet brought her anywhere happy; one may be right. But important doesn’t mean accessible; and the extent of importance doesn’t seem to be equal for both sides.

She smiles and looks at Rachel with disturbing tiredness and gloom: have you ever felt like there is too much for you to bear? Your family is falling apart, even though you thought there wasn’t shit to fuck up. Somebody takes away something you care about the most. You fail all your attempts to fucking keep yourself cool and then – a single mistake, and you’re done, and everybody is done with your shit, so they throw you a handful of pills and an applet for some kind of a fight club-ish circle of whimpers and psychos.

Rachel hears herself swallowing; the atmosphere in the car – the atmosphere around Sarah, actually – thickens, electric; she feels the pressure bursting open her skull, fattening pain and sickness.

And then one meets someone special; the last person he expects to meet there; and when they meet each other’s eyes, it’s like a bloody lightning burning away all the worries, at least for some time. No matter how different they are – _because_ they are so different – they can somehow break off each other’s fall; rejuvenate.

Sarah breathes deeply and nods; it’s like a long, long night ends and there is finally the rising sun, and you swear to God you don’t believe in and hate you don’t want to fuck it up. Like that another person is your life you was sure you’d lost.

Something stable. Something real.

They keep quiet for some time, then Sarah chuckles: like if it’s not for her I would put on some make up and go abuse my authority and have some fun – just to feel alive; and when she looks back at Rachel and she can read it on her face: wow, there is a lot of blood.

Rachel touches her hair under that sore spot; there is much warm wetness indeed; how dead on time. Sarah watches her head attentively, pulling hair away from the wound with some proficiency – that’s when they, apparently, pass the sign as she leans back and points to the right, saying there is a rest area there. Rachel doesn’t really need to play innocent right now – she feels dizzy enough to honestly act like she’s at the point of faint.

The rest area is just as she remembers it – tables and benches covered with fallen leaves and dust, one small building divided into the men and women restrooms, and a stand for a map without any signs of a map but with “a lie is my armor” graffity; Rachel smirks to herself – look, Sarah, right about you.

But Sarah, of course, doesn’t remember anything – she flies away from the car as soon as they stop and looks around for a few moments, which Rachel uses to reach the black bag – the axe, the screwdriver and obviously some kind of metal support she’s taken with her from the cabin after hitting her on the head, are here. Rachel hides an axe under her leather jacket right before Sarah ducks back into the car; no, it’s fine, Rachel’s just looking for a first aid kit.

When she finally climbs out of the car, Sarah is on the area’s parking lot; she watches a dirty minivan, her hands are dropped loose and her face is pale even in a thin light of the only working street lamp. Rachel hears her whispering “it’s theirs”.

D020915.

It’s fucking theirs.

It’s Alison’s fucking minivan.

Sarah watches Rachel with that pure, sincere confusion she’s already seen more than once on her trip; Sarah starts to understand that she doesn’t understand a bloody thing. Rachel clasps the axe to her chest under the jacket tighter.

Alison’s car, right? The one she used to bring her children – adopted children – to soccer and then back home? The one you’d been waiting to show up somewhere at the park near the field and then sneaked to it while nobody was watching?

The one with a broken seat and little cracks all over the glove box, about that she lied to her husband, saying it was an unfortunate accident with groceries on the way back home; but the truth is – she tried to straddle you on the passenger’s seat, trying to lower its back, and when it finally gave in and felt, somebody punched the glove box.

Sarah looks back at the car as if remembering every single moment of that scene, every feeling and every thought; Rachel sees it assembling in her mind; deep shocked reflection in her eyes. Sarah looks through her, asking how the fuck she knows; but Rachel only chuckles.

It’s not all. They also fucked – more than once – at Alison’s house; one time they occupied a fridge in the garage while children, tired, been watching TV in the living room; that same dark-blue, almost violet minivan was the only line of defense between hot and panting you and the shame of exposure.

And that’s not about how somebody you’ve met less than half an hour ago can possibly know that; it’s about that last time at your home while your kinda boyfriend was out, again, when Alison decided to fly out without a shower or cuddling or eating your poor-roasted toasts while being awkwardly silent but still together, and you couldn’t find the right words to stop her so you’d fought and you almost hit her hissing about just how fucking much you need her in your life. And then – what? She’s on a vacation with her husband, the one you’re planning to assassinate someday, that fat shitbird fucker who touches her when you can’t (because you don’t believe it when Alison’s saying they hadn’t have sex since you’ve met each other on your working therapy that took place at the same center where she participated in the some kind of an amateur theatrical bullshit).

Were you okay with that? For first two days – yeah, why not; but you probably started re-reading the message on the third, trying to find some clues about why the hell she’s not texting you or calling because you’re sure Alison’s the type which dramatically says it’s over before actually leaving you. On the fourth day you went to her house; did you hope to find her there – or not to find? Were you ready to shoot her husband if he would open the door, happy smile on his round face, Alison with children murmuring something behind his back?

Sarah’s trembling; her arms moves to her belt, eyes are wild and filled with tears as she asks again – who told you that shit? – and Rachel just shrugs – you did.

But you’re wrong Sarah – it wasn’t like that; you’re confusing everything, from the beginning – it was a funny farm, not theatre, for example, though, yep, I kinda see the similarity.

Yeah, Sarah’s been participating in that “work therapy”; they’ve been making some banners for the Labor Day when Rachel first saw her – sitting with her paint still untouched, grumbling about how she’s not her brother – yeah, right, the one who fucked her up in a court and then left for New York. All Rachel needed from that piece of punk shit is information about her foster mother – but Sarah, certainly, have grown bored in loonies’ company and their first encounter in the all-grey soundproof therapy room ended with Rachel’s face pressed to the wall and Sarah’s jaw dislocated; it definitely wasn’t something agent Duncan expected from a polite talk about Siobhan Sadler’s affairs with IRA if Sarah ever knew anything about it (and she knew, according to Morrison).

But she doesn’t say it for the first time – it’s supposed to be a polite talk indeed; but the second time they’re supplied with a warrant – and Sarah’s sedated. This time Rachel talks about Morrison and their child – both to explain how she got the warrant and to hurt, deep and nasty. You’re not the prisoner here, she reminds; this rehab is only recommended to you by your lawyer, but you for sure can become a prisoner somewhere in other place, where women wear orange on Wednesdays.

The moment when their eyes meet and one leans to kiss another with all her desperate anger and fear, and the next moment when that another one answers out of surprise, are valid for both Rachel’s and Sarah’s realities; only, again, it happens not on the parking lot after saving some soccer mom from panic attack, but in that very all-grey soundproof therapy room when Rachel grew too irritated for driving further interrogation and stood up to go and ruin this loathsome worthless life.

And they fucked, Rachel recalls, not at all in the minivan; no, it was some janitor’s room or something, and they’ve broken couple of shelves and a mop instead of the seat and the glove box. But it definitely was worth it; as well as that time when Sarah almost broke Rachel’s arms holding it over her head pinned to the cold metal table, the only silver lining of the whole bloody world.

And then, Rachel says, moving closer, with her head aching like it’s filed with scorching lava; and then my investigation was over, with Siobhan banged, bagged and tagged, and you trying to put out my eye with a pen – the one I strongly recommended you to use for signing your testimony right from the beginning. But you fucked up, Sarah, just as you always did; you decided to give up on the remnants of your life, run away and – what? Start a killing spree on your way to your daughter, hurting innocent people? Did you really think I wouldn’t connect the dots?

Or (Rachel stops moving, smiling wryly to Sarah, blood now flowing down her temple and from her nose) you wanted me to connect them?

Rachel barely hears foliage rustling and wind howling behind the static and ringing; the only thing Sarah says is who the fuck is Sarah?

Rachel can’t keep away the laughter.

Really. It’s a very good question.

_Who the fuck is Sarah Manning?_

The laughter causes the paroxysm of the sickness and she has to move forward not to vomit, her hand on the rubberized handle of the axe are sweaty and shaking; poor creature, I had told you that at least three times before, but you’re too insane to understand that, aren’t you? You can’t see how your brain have finally given up and betrayed you, left you wandering through your confabulatory delirium.

And when did she had time to steal her gun, Rachel muses, watching it being taken from behind Sarah’s back and aimed at her; she only has time for one thought before she throws the axe at her, and it’s that she’s actually really sorry for all of that - again. Next moment pain and sickness just rich the highest point, collapsing her into a big black void.

When she wakes up, everything is red; she’s alone at the one of the tables with benches. There is the axe in leaves near her face, and the orange handle of the screwdriver sticks out of someone’s eyes. Rachel groans both from irritation and pain somewhere above her right shoulder-blade; fingers are cold and dead and aren’t moving  at all. She manages to kneel and look over herself; she can’t distinguish her blood from a girl’s blood – they are lying pretty close and the girl’s neck and chest are in a total mess; the axe with dried up blood and pieces of flesh gives insight of what has happened. She can’t tell what time it is, but it’s still dark and cold and blood is still liquid.

Soon Rachel has to groan again, and she feels it cutting her throat, causing a gag reflex, but her stomach is empty so it’s just several painful spasms; but she groans anyway, because – really, Sarah, killing cops now? Her name is Elizabeth Childs and she’s Seattle PD detective; Rachel can’t guess how she ended up at the godforsaken rest area in the middle of nowhere, but it’s Sarah – she always finds them anyhow; and now unfortunate Beth Childs’ going to become another MIA with her academy photo on a wall of fame back at PD.. Rachel thinks, she should visit her home and express condolences after all of this is over if there is anyone who would care for it.

The door of the car is still open back at the parking lot – the light inside is on and Rachel’s sure there is this annoying peeping and ringing but she can’t hear it behind the thick static in her head. She crawls back, leaving Beth, the screwdriver and the axe behind, her right hand is still numb and the wound burning to the bone (which she isn’t sure isn’t affected). She recalls herself putting the drugs she’d found some time before she took this car to the glove box; she’s not sure how much of it is left there, but anything would do right now – she must go back on Sarah’s track, must find her before another Beth Childs plays in the gore version of Dr. Tulp's anatomy lesson.

All she can find (aside from the fact that her bloody gun’s gone, though pink phone and someone’s wallet with B-1 visa are still on their places) is only few pills of Vicodin and two zip-locks with something that looks like meth which she decides to do later. She also discovers that her own badge is missing and she feels like she should become even more anxious now because if Sarah founds it – it’s no good; she even thinks of crawling back to Beth’s body, to the blood puddle and piles of leaves and look for it there. But all she can do is to chew the rest of the painkillers and close her eyes, imagining herself floating to the driver’s sit without standing, walking or moving at all. She tries to figure out how long has it been since she passed out; how much time does she need to catch up with Sarah – the longer she sits like that the more, anyway; so Rachel strains herself and moves to the driver’s seat, hurting everything that has already been in agony with transmission lever.

She feels a bit better driving back to the main road; she drives north because that’s where she would head if she were Sarah. The road winds, leading downhill, and she notices horizon being slightly rouge between solid lines of trees.

Rachel sees a car; all the rest is just a silhouette leaning against the trunk, covered with thick shade of tall pines and October morning. the sleeves of the grey jacket she wears are rolled up, buttons glimmering in the cold blue of low beam.

That’s really how she knows who it is even before the figure moves toward the car; that and the holster on her right hip, rubbing on her pants slightly as she walks.

The holster and, well, the gut feeling which is actually centered in the throbbing, bleeding points of her head and back, right where Sarah hit her with something she must have had with herself. The concussion and pain shock mix with insomnia and déjà vu; make her feel like she’s on a rollercoaster, trying not to vomit on a peculiar steep turn. She can hear the pounding of the little wheels on the rails, it’s squawking which turns into the knock and hissing as Rachel lowers the glass.

The first thing Rachel thinks – damn, she looks pretty good. She expects something else – the last time they are that close (that’s even more shameful episode than her amateur mistake back at the rest area) she has dark blue and grey circles under her red eyes and pink and violet spider veins under the yellow skin of her cheeks and neck; and now she looks much better – her hair is short and blond, her face is fresh even though the left side is little bruised, a scratch under her eye.

She watches Rachel with aloof and tired expression, one hand rests upon the lowered window and another’s on the flap of the holster; Rachel thinks about smooth black Glock, because it must be the Glock, but “Cold bloody morning, eh?” – is all she manages to say. The word “bloody” returns to her the second after, the voice is cold and professional but somehow indulgently mocking and absent, as if she speaks, observing this very fact – which she’s, apparently, doing, considering all the mess in the car.

Good bloody morning, Sarah Manning.

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I'm not a native speaker, so I apologize for any weird things or missing articles or other issues. Unfortunately, we may not know all the nuances of the language; just do our best, so, please, feel free to correct any mistakes if you like. Practice is the best master, they say.
> 
> Also, we obviously don't have Washington state in Russia, so, yeah, it's just google maps and imagination (and movies).
> 
> And, em, I may have got too excited while writing, huh.
> 
> Anyway, hope you liked it, Zach.


End file.
